Held Hostage to the Elderly

Those grizzled with eld get out there and vote. The young, generally, have better things to do and don't. Our baby boomers are aging rapidly, and fewer and fewer children are being born. Amongst those segments of the population who are having lots of children, they tend to skew towards the lower income brackets.

This is a recipe for disaster. Everyone talks about how much we're blowing in Iraq, and I have to bow my head and weep at their financial naivete. Medicare and Social Security are an order of magnitude worse of a financial sinkhole than ten Iraq wars. The recent prescription medication extension to Medicare is the most fiscally irresponsible legislation ever passed. By the mid 2000s we will be paying the entire national budget just to support interest payments on Medicare and Social Security, with no money left over for anything else.

Why does this happen? Politicians know the programs must be drastically reformed or eliminated altogether, but they know that they can live out their careers without having to do it themselves. The third rail of politics are always large-scale subsidies, and there are no bigger subsidies out there. If you are under 40, be prepared to subsidize your parents and grandparents for years to come. Those who are receiving Social Security now are getting far more out than they put in, even when you adjust for inflation. Lovely.

The trickery involved with Social Security, in particular, is galling. People look at their paychecks and think "This isn't that bad." Nonsense. Your employer is paying twice as much as you are, a fact that directly reduces your paycheck. Social Security is also a regressive tax, meaning that it affects the poor far more than the rich, since only the first 100K or so is taxed.

Both programs have already died. We just won't acknowledge their corpses.